You know how some sci-fi movies had a bunch of people around a meeting table that were not actually there? They were realistic virtual projections of the meeting attendees. The Project Starline is Google’s attempt to replicate this sci-fi technology.
The project started in 2021 to help people feel like they are together even when they are far apart. Project Starline is like regular video conferencing, except that the person you are conferencing with is in 3D. You can talk, gesture, and make eye contact like you would when communicating with a real person.
The system uses advanced AI to build a photorealistic model of the person and projects that on a light-of-field display with a unique sense of volume and depth.
Project Starline started with requiring complex hardware and an entire room to create a live 3D model of the person you were talking to but thanks to the development of new AI techniques, it now only requires a few standard cameras.
The latest prototype resembles a more traditional video conference system with a 3D model and as you can see, the resulting 3D model is incredibly lifelike which means we are a step closer to the scenario we described at the beginning of this article. It is indeed an absolutely mind-bending development.
The images do not do justice to what the current prototype has achieved. We suggest that you watch the video below to fully understand what this means for futurism.
Images: Google.